


Conquer

by dreamoverdrive



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen, Personal Growth, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 22:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3225353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamoverdrive/pseuds/dreamoverdrive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Korra's introspection at distinct points in canon and prompt-based chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set in Book one and the prompt is fear.

Korra wasn’t scared of much. There were the jolts of panic when she fought or made a mistake but the  _real fear,_  the fear she refused to acknowledge within herself (because acknowledging it would only serve to validate it) made pale memories of moments gone wrong flicker behind her eyelids in the darkness of her room. 

_Avatar Aang wouldn’t have fought them. They would have liked him. Of course they would rather spend time with **her**. The first Avatar, unable to bend all the elements—  **what a shame.**_

Inadequacy. That was her greatest fear. That she would never beenough. That her story, carved into sandstone walls out of mere obligation, would be hidden in the corners of the temples where no one would have to look upon her failure.

When she heard that silky voice floating out of the radio— _you no longer have to live in fear; the time has come for benders to feel fear—_ she was cemented into place, cold sweat dripping down the line of her back. If she hadn’t wanted to scream, she might have laughed.

Buddy, I’m nothing but solidified fear.

Tarlok came with his flowered words meant to flatter instead of terrify _—_   _we need someone fearless in the face of danger—_ and panic sizzled up so quickly in her throat it was a battle in itself to suppress it.

I am not afraid. 

* * *

 

Then the gala was just shot after shot. There was the beautiful girl resting a tastefully placed arm on Mako’s (if only Korra was a master at making herself look good) and the police chief in her face reminding her that she had done absolutely nothing to deserve this. Fear didn’t make Korra timid and there was a fierce frustration building beneath the thin web of her shame.

The popcorning of the reporters was so well scripted that it was almost as though they had taped the nasally voice that whispered doubt in her head. This had trap stamped all over it in big red letters.  _How do you think Avatar Aang would have handled this? Are you **afraid**  of Amon?_

_Iamnotafraid. Iamnotafraid._

“ **I am not afraid of anyone!”**

Not even herself. 


	2. Endure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chapter prompt is endure and set in the beginning of Book 3. This was written before Korra Alone aired so it deviates slightly from canon.

It sure as hell wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be.

It reminded her of how she had snuck off the first time, tumbling head first into the mess that led to more and more until she was sat crumpled on a bed with muscles that  _wouldn’tfuckinglisten_. She remembered the bittersweet parting, the hug and encouragement from the one who above all others expected her to be like  _him._  She’d been told that she would be great. She supposed that she was. After all, wasn’t that what everyone had told her over and over again as they tried to roll her wheelchair over rough patches of ice that made her teeth rattle?

_“You have done great things, Avatar Korra. You have saved us all.”_

Part of her was determined to deny that she had done anything at all except have liquid metal pumped into her. It was the same part of her that whispered on the bad days, and most of them were bad days, that she had  _failed_. Failed at what, she wasn’t quite sure. It was an inherent sense of unfulfillment that kept her staring at blank expanses of snow and blank pieces of paper she was supposed to be writing heartfelt sentiments on. 

_I miss you all so much._

It was what they wanted to hear and what she felt (one of the few things she still felt), but it wasn’t something she could try and convey without frustration bubbling in her chest. She’d always communicated with action but now that she was sat in the stifling wheelchair, she felt very, very lost. So she left it alone. She was leaving many things alone.

When it came time to return, she found it was something she couldn’t do. Couldn’t had never been part of her vocabulary, but the word had been indoctrinated to her all her life and, well, it was finally sinking in. She’d been told that she couldn’t come to Republic City all that time ago, that she couldn’t be so hot-headed, that she couldn’t just travel when there were murderers ( _nightmares_ ) out for her, and she had never listened. (Maybe she should have.) But when  _couldn’t_  became physical—that she couldn’t stand up so quickly, that she couldn’t crouch that far down with her new center of balance so weak, that she couldn’t punch or kick or scream as powerfully as she could anymore, that kind of  _couldn’t_  began to take hold.

So when she smiled carefully at her dad and her body felt nearly  _good as new_ , the couldn’t niggling at the back of her mind convinced her that this was something she  _wasn’t_  going to do. (As if she even had a choice.)

It was easy to slip on the boat heading for the Earth Kingdom. There was no white fur to bury herself in this time and no heavy heartbeat to fall asleep to while she tried to sleep in the hold. She was alone in every sense of the word on that ship, back pressed against the mast, listening to the constant lap of water against wood. She wasn't sure what she was waiting for, but it was better this way. She would be better this way.

Brawling sounded like a strangely good idea. Sprits forbid that she wonder why it sounded like a good idea because there were probably many numbing reasons why and she wasn’t sure if she could handle feeling any more numb after all this time. She decided that needing the money was enough to satisfy her motives.  

She hadn’t been expecting a walk in the park in the arena, but she hadn’t expected red faces with voices that bounced off the walls into her skull, flecks of spittle raining on her when she jumped into the pit, or hard eyes examining her like the next slice of meat to he stretched on a tray at the other side of the cavity.

There was no one moving behind her like there had been in pro-bending. That should have been obvious from the get-go but she found that she was leaving herself wide open after her attacks because the ingrained instinct that there was someone behind in a matching uniform ready to back her up clung to the edges of her mind. There was no one to back her up when the earth came rippling or flying and there was no one to take the hit when she stumbled and waited that sickening instant for the exploitation of her weakness. She was on her own with muscles she hadn’t quite reclaimed and it was all well and fine, because when had she ever _truly_ not been alone?

A sliver of her that she may have saved from all those years protested, because  _they_ had never left her alone (at least not intentionally), but she found herself focusing on wrapping bloody knuckles before matches and stitching up the tears in her threadbare clothes rather than that. Not because she couldn’t think about it, but because thinking about it meant so much more feeling, and she hadn’t come here to feel things that couldn’t suppressed by rock against skin.

Purple spreading murals under her skin and red scuffs lining her joints where she had slid were painful but it hurt in an entirely different way. This was the kind of hurt she could handle. Rocks smashing into forearms and back thudding against the wall—this was what she had been made to handle.

And even when she felt the old strength creeping back in and she  _still_ let herself be thrown against walls and slung across shard-covered floors, it wasn’t anything she really wanted to think about. It was what she had been made to handle, tempered as she had been all those years in seclusion, and handle it she would.  _(Because damn it all if she would let herself win when they were probably worried sick at home or whatever had been home and she deserved every damn second she suffered and maybe it was beginning to make her feel a little better in some kind of sick way.)_

Korra would endure. She had this far and something told her that she would awhile longer.

But when she stared into the cheap mirror in her apartment and saw purpled eyes swollen nearly shut, it was the shard of Avatar Korra staring back in disappointment she couldn’t bring herself to endure.


	3. Growth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter prompt is growth.

The first word that came to Korra’s mind when she thought of the White Lotus Compound was confinement.

At first it had been so large and strange, with people looking at her in a reverence that she couldn’t quite fathom as a kid. They looked at her like they were searching for something in the eyes of the young girl  _(it’s ok, we all miss him)_ but she didn’t quite know what to give in order to meet their expectations.

As she grew up it became suffocating. It was apparent that they were all waiting for something. From what she had learned about her predecessor, she assumed that they were waiting for her to shave her head and go off meat. Yeah right.

The pressure lay on her back heavily because it seemed that she was just about everything she wasn’t supposed to be. Oh, great, you mastered water bending, how about  _air bending?_  Then came earth bending and then fire bending and the question grew and grew until she saw it plastered on the faces of everyone in the damn place.  _What is wrong with Avatar Korra?_

Nothing. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her. Except for the fact that she was being crushed in this iron grip of expectancy that stifled absolutely everything she could have, would have, or should have been. It’s like she was clay and they had put her in an Avatar Aang mold but she just wouldn’t fit. There was too much, too little, and far too many imperfections for her to belong.

On lonely nights in her room she really did start to wonder. _Is there really something wrong with Avatar Korra?_ Thenthere was that fierce voice that was all her own than snapped  _no. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Avatar Korra, but there are thousands upon thousands of things wrong with this._

She had outgrown this place. And it was time to get out.

* * *

 

Korra was too much for the Compound but she was practically drowning in Republic City.

It was easier to muster up the bravado when there was no one else but her keepers to see it, but here she was on display. She was in the newspapers, the radios, the thoughts of all the people, she didn’t know if it was more exhilarating or terrifying.

But part of her (most of her) was absolutely _loving_  it. When she stood in that pro-bending stadium, sore arms raised with blood pumping fiercely under her skin, she was  _free_. Slowly turning to take in faces lit by the glow of camera flash and a sweaty smile stretched wide on her face, Korra felt larger than life.

* * *

 

Hollowness had always been a term to describe something physically tangible until she had felt it with such a potent ache inside of herself. They always said that she hadn’t been connected to her past lives, and she may have allowed herself to believe them, but now it was obvious that they all had been fools because there must never have been an avatar after Wan that felt this  _empty_.

Maybe she hadn’t noticed them but they had always been  _there_. Like the sense of another’s presence in an adjacent room, they were always there, ready, waiting, empathizing. She hadn’t recognized the feeling until it had been torn away with such brutal abruptness and she was left in the snow as a sliver of the human being _(Avatar)_  she had been.

Her face was raw pressed up against the ice and she couldn’t even find it in herself to scream ( _notrealnotrealnotreal)_. Korra felt very, very s m a l l.

* * *

 

“Korra, you will be ok.”

His voice carried the solemn weight of an assured promise and she tried to smile but really, it was just a kind of grimace with sore lips and tired eyes. She was just so tired.

Tenzin sighed and they looked in silence over the balcony at the air benders training. “You know, you did this.”

Korra let her eyes drift over the happy faces below and wondered how on earth this could have attributed to her. She felt like she was looking back on memories from another lifetime that she hadn’t made.

“You revitalized a culture, Korra. You’ve not only saved the world, but left it changed for the better. You’ve balanced the nations and fulfilled the hope that had rested on a single family. You have left your mark on this world and I don’t believe that it will ever forget you.”

Korra smiled and this time it was genuine. The connection was slow but it was coming back with more and more success every day. She was—  _is_ Avatar Korra. She tilted her face up into the light and thought that yes, she had grown to be much more than anyone had imagined.

And she wasn’t done just yet. 


	4. Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter prompt is alone. 
> 
> WARNING!!!
> 
> May be triggering from those with depression.

Korra had come to categorize everything as easy and not easy.

Blank walls, blank stares, and blank words— those were easy. Empty became a coping method. If she let herself fill with a void, there was no room for anything else. ( _Pain, fear, loneliness.)_ Acknowledgement, moving, and  _breathing—_  those were very, very hard.

She did what she could but grey walls became more and more familiar and so did the gap that everyone was trying to fill.  It was a gap she couldn’t name, because you couldn’t name something that didn’t exist in the first place, but it was far too tangible and far too terrifying for her to confront it. She let it be. And she sat still, breathing, breathing, breathing.

She was scared to confront the nothingness because she knew exactly what it would tell her.

_Unnecessary. You are so, so unnecessary, you helpless, helpless girl._

Spirits, she’d never felt this alone before. If she wasn’t working so hard to convince herself that there wasn’t anything to feel, she might have spent the last two weeks screaming. There had been so many moments where she had experienced that fragile fear of being snuffed out, but there was always the comforting knowledge that the cycle would go on. Time would pass, and the world would change, but there would always be that little piece of the universe dedicated to Avatar Korra.

The idea of being eradicated, removed entirely— it was a reminder.  _Korra, you are not permanent. Nothing is._

And if that wasn’t the most fucking terrifying thing she had ever encountered, she didn’t know what was.

After the whole ordeal when she thought she had made it, everything started to crumble. They had always scorned her for not being spiritual enough but as her limbs recovered and her soul didn’t, she thought that maybe she had been smart to cling to her physicality before all of  _this_. Suddenly she was just so tired; so lonely with no desire to reach out. She didn’t want to move, she didn’t want to eat. It was like what she had been so scared of was coming to pass. She’d been so prepared to fight for her life, clawing her way through the harsh reality reflected in the hallucinations and the rock that crumbled when the world was a bright blur of fury and pain. And yet now, when she was smothered in blankets and kind words, Avatar Korra didn’t want to exist.

She felt so _fragile_. She had felt worn down and beaten before, but never, ever _fragile_. She felt breakable and people offering to compensate for her fragility only made her feel more and more lost. Wasn’t she supposed to be the peace-bringer? Wasn’t she supposed to be the mighty protector? Here she was, crouched in the saggy folds of a wheelchair feeling entirely pointless.

It took several months of covering fear with a vague haze of emptiness but finally, when she was sat at the table with everyone trying to carefully put her at some sort of ease they hadn’t quite figured out, something thick and tight rose in her throat.  

Her shoulders shook as she gasped, trying to take in more air to fill the void— _enter the void, Korra._  No, she wanted  _out of this fucking void._

Several pairs of hands were steadying her at once as she sobbed and she looked up into eyes bright with concern and fear.

_Korra, what is wrong? Korra, let us help you._

Everything went into sharp clarity that was so much harder than it had seemed to be before but she needed this. The world needed this.

“I feel so  _alone_ ,” she choked out. They held her close and it was another battle to continue on. “Help me, please. I’m so  _lonely_.”


End file.
